WHEN a sun-burnt, stocky man was escorted out of the Kuching courtroom with hands cuffed behind his back, reporters covering his sentencing on August 17 had no inkling that the rustic-looking person before them was one of the world’s most wanted paedophiles.

Kuching media were waiting to get a good shot of the man who chose to hide his face behind a mask and black Adidas baseball cap.

“Reporters who covered the proceedings knew (that the crime he had committed) was very serious,” Hafizah Abdul Hamid, the court reporter for English daily The Borneo Post, said.

“But there was no trial so nothing much was disclosed in court to indicate the magnitude of his crimes.”

Hafizah said proceedings went ahead quickly and smoohtly when Alladin Lanim was produced in each of the three magistrates’ courts.

The unrepresented 41-year-old oil palm plantation worker pleaded guilty to all 14 charges under sections 14(a) and 15(e) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017 that were read to him.

Alladin was sentenced to a total of 16 years in jail and 12 strokes of the cane for molesting young boys.

His modus operandi was to make the boys watch pornography before making sexual advances on them.

There was nothing in the court appearances to indicate the seriousness of the crimes he had committed, which were reported in the Australian paper, she said, referring to the Sydney Morning Herald report on September 5 under the headline: “How Australian police tracked one of world’s most wanted paedophiles to Borneo”.

Local papers merely reported it as a molest case which had received scant attention.

But Hafizah is kicking herself for missing the story. She had managed to get a peek at the charge sheet which stated that Lanim was charged with “child grooming”. She had left it at that.

Bright student

Despite his appearance, Alladin is no country bumpkin.

He is tech-savvy, which probably explains how he had find his way around the Internet easily and undetected for years.

The Herald report stated that Alladin had been abusing children between the ages of two and 16 for “at least 14 years” since 2007 without detection.

Alladin then went about boasting on messaging forums about recording his crimes on the dark web.

The Herald reported “dozens of children” were abused and Alladin’s posts about his exploits had made him one of global law enforcement’s most wanted child sex offenders.

However, it was evidence gathered by specialist investigators from the Australian Federal Police, Queensland Police and the Australian Transactions Reports and Analysis Centre that led to his capture.

The capture shocked the people of Alladin’s village of Kampung Bitokan in Slampit, in the coastal district of Lundu, about 53km from Kuching.

They were appalled to learn that one of the villagers was a pederast who had preyed on young boys for more than 14 long years.

Their elected representative, de facto law minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, was also stunned.

“I was in the dark and no one informed me until the arrest was made,” the Santubong MP, who has represented the seat since 2004, told The Malaysian Insight.

Alladin, according to a villager, was a good student.

After he completed his primary education, he was sent to an elite government schools for bright Bumiputera students in Kuching, SM Sains Matang.

Upon completing his secondary education,  Alladin secured a Mara scholarship to study engineering at Universiti Pertanian Malaysia, said the villager who asked to remain anonymous to avoid friction with Alladin’s large family.

Alladin reportedly dropped out of the course but no one knew why.

Another villager said Mara withdrew the scholarship when Alladin’s academic performance deteriorated.

It is difficult to get to know the man from the descriptions of the residents of the Bidayuh village, who knew him as “Balau”.

He was known to be withdrawn and unsociable, with few friends, according to the villagers.

Nobody knew why he had slackened in his studies, nor did they know much about the work he did on the oil palm plantation, which is about a five-minute bike ride from the village.

But his IT skills were common knowledge.

“Maybe that explains why it took a long time to unmask him,” one villager said.

Alladin has a Facebook account under the name “Alla Dane Lau (Balau diih)”.

However, the account has been cleaned out. All his personal information, photos, posts have been deleted and there are no “friends” showing. – September 12, 2021.